


What Could Be

by Tormented_Gale



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: M/M, Male My Unit | Reflet | Robin, Not really one-sided Chrom/Robin, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tormented_Gale/pseuds/Tormented_Gale
Summary: Robin makes a poor decision and gets stuck in his own head. When Chrom arrives, and tries to get him to see reason, it leads to another rash decision.





	What Could Be

It is days like today he enjoys watching everything the other troops do. Each of them lends a strength to the whole otherwise missing, regardless of weapon or attitude, and he is grateful for each and every one of them. It makes planning out the next battle strategy all the easier and all the sweeter for every victory and every Risen they destroy.

Their most recent fight left many of them wounded, and Robin cannot help but blame himself. He is, after all, the tactician, the master of the battlefield, and yet a simple mistake had led to himself, Chrom, and Lissa cornered. They’d fought their way out but not without injury. Chrom’s arms had ended up with deep scratches, Lissa several on her legs, and Robin himself with a bruised chest and a laceration through his hip. It twinged as if to remind him of its constant presence and failure.

The village, at least, was ecstatic to be safe. Flowers had rained down on their heads as they’d entered carrying their wounded. The inn was offered freely for their use, as were many of the homes of the citizens, and Chrom had stared around in wonder. These people knew hardship, it was clear, yet they took them all in. Frederick had pointed out rather unsubtly that these people wished to repay the small army for their lives.

It was how Robin had received his own room at the inn. From his window he spots the others training, those unwounded anyway. He himself is confined to his quarters until his wounds heal and he is not in the least pleased by the prospect. He limps over to the bed and lays down in it, immediately disquieted with how soft and unlike the hard ground it is.

He hates being restless and useless.

A knock on his door distracts him from his thoughts and he pushes himself up enough to lean back against the headboard.

“Come in!” he calls. Chrom opens the door and shuts it quietly behind him. Both of his arms are healing well, Robin notices, and the bandages are clean, but they are still there as well.

“Robin, how do you feel?” Chrom asks. He drags a chair over and sits down at Robin’s bedside.

“I’m fine,” Robin assures him with a sigh. So many others have stopped to ask him; keeping his temper in check and stopping himself from snapping at the well-wishes is growing more difficult with each new face, but Chrom is an exception anyway. He instead turns the question on Chrom, “And you?”

“I will live,” Chrom chuckles. “My arms are almost healed up thanks to Libra. We should be on the move again in a few days after we’ve restocked and everyone has healed up.” Chrom frowns at Robin’s hip and nods. “When will you let the healer patch that up with a staff?”

“It’ll heal fine on its own.”

“Robin, are you doing this out of some kind of self-recrimination or anger?” Chrom asks bluntly.

“Of course not.”

“Then why not let the healer take care of it?”

“Chrom, I don’t need their help,” Robin protests.

With a frown still firmly in place, Chrom points at Robin’s hip. “Are you blaming yourself for what happened in the forest?”

Robin opens his mouth to deny it, but Chrom’s eyebrow is raised high and he looks ever more doubtful. After a few moments Robin closes his mouth and looks away, lips twisted in a frustrated scowl.

“As I thought,” Chrom says with a sigh. “Look, it was not your fault. It happens - we get surrounded.”

“I’m a  _ tactician,  _ Chrom. That shouldn’t happen.”

“You can not plan for every contingency.”

“I can damn well try!”

“Robin, be reasonable.” Chrom merely raises the other eyebrow to join the first at the frustrated, done look on Robin’s face. “I know you better than you think. You can not blame yourself every time something goes wrong on the battlefield.”

“Why the hell not?” The swear slips from his lips unintentionally but gives Chrom only more fuel for the fire.

“Because It is foolish and a waste of time and energy,” Chrom responds. He sits back in the chair and looks out the window, mulling over his own thoughts on the matter. Robin continues to glare at him as long as he can before slumping into the bed. He is too exhausted and done with the whole situation to deal with it.

“I was afraid… afraid you’d been hurt badly,” Chrom says suddenly, and the admission seems to cost him something dearly. He shakes his head and sighs shakily. “Your hip was… it was torn so badly, and we’d thought an artery was hit…”

“Libra patched it up,” Robin says, rather humbled and dumbstruck by Chrom’s admission. “It is - ”

“I swear, if you say It is fine one more time…” Chrom huffs and stands up abruptly. When he steps up to Robin’s bedside and towers over, Robin cannot help but shrink back slightly. He has rarely seen Chrom’s anger directed at any of them, but it is legendary, and not something Robin especially wants to be on the receiving end of.

“It is not fine. You letting yourself deal with a wound when it could be  _ healed  _ by someone makes no sense, and is downright selfish and dangerous,” Chrom snaps. “What would happen if a battle broke out right now? You’d be a liability because you’re too damn stuck in your own head!” He runs a hand through disheveled blue hair - he has been doing that more and more lately - and glares down at Robin. “We all make mistakes - It is a part of being human. You’re acting like this was the thing that made us hate your or distrust you or something!”

Robin tries to think of a good protest and cannot. Instead he does the only thing he can think of to stop Chrom’s rambling, something that his brain sparks as a bad idea and files it under ‘bad ideas to never be done’ until he is doing it. He drags Chrom down to his eye level and meets those open lips with his own, cutting off the rant’s continuation.

The sound abruptly ends. Chrom stays there, frozen, Robin’s lips gently pressing to Chrom’s. He reaches up to thread his hand into Chrom’s hair and tilts his head to the side, continuing the kiss until he needs to come up for air, then releases Chrom. The prince blinks dumbly and stands there.

And Robin panics.

What has he done? He just  _ kissed _ Chrom, for Naga’s sake! The crown prince! The Exalt! Robin gasps and jerks back, staring up horrified at Chrom and fumbling for words, “I’m so sorry, Chrom! I don’t know what I was thinking! Just f-forget it happened, please... “  _ Please don’t let this come between us, don’t let it destroy our friendship… please… _

Chrom finally blinks, coming out of his haze, and looks down at Robin as if seeing him for the first time. Grayish-white hair, dark, forest eyes, a slightly crooked nose from it being broken at some point, healing scars beneath a high collar… plump lips slightly reddened, smooth skin…

“Robin,” Chrom says, and Robin stops half-rant. “Can I kiss you?”

For a moment, Robin says nothing. Then, fiercely, “ _ Yes _ .”

Before he even knows what he is doing, what either of them are doing, Robin finds himself with a lap full of Chrom and a pair of insistent lips on his own. Chrom’s are clumsy, a little too bruising, but Robin gentles the kiss and leads the prince in the strange dance of discovery. Soon enough It is with more finesse than Robin has ever experienced before, though admittedly his own experience is rather small. 

Chrom pulls back after a particularly hard kiss and stares into Robin’s face. He sits on the edge of Robin’s bed and gently takes his marked hand into his own.

“How long?” Chrom asks, pointedly not looking at him. Robin’s heart falls into his stomach but he tries to stay unaffected.

“How long…?”

“How long have you wanted to do that?”

_ Since I met you _ . “For… some time.”

Chrom’s lips quirk. “‘Some time’ eh?”

Robin shrugs, carefully nonchalant, but he looks up when Chrom cups his cheek. He stares into Chrom’s eyes and sees only affection, but not the level of affection Robin wishes for. His shoulders fall as Chrom leans once more in to kiss Robin’s forehead gently. Too good to be true, that kiss. So much of his life has become the same thing.

“I would like to rest for a while,” Robin says, giving Chrom an out. The king-to-be takes it with a jerky nod. He stands up and looks down at Robin again, but the tactician is already turning over onto his side and closing his eyes, pretending to sleep. He feels Chrom’s gaze burn a hole into his back.

“I wish… sometimes I wish my circumstances were different,” Chrom says quietly, almost not audible. “I…” For a moment, he pauses as if to say something else, then he is out the door, out of the inn room, and Robin is left utterly alone.

Robin closes his eyes and wonders what it would feel like to keep kissing Chrom, to lay side by side in bed and discuss the future. He wonders if Chrom would be rough, calloused hands roaming Robin’s body with reverence and purpose and holding and restricting but not painful. Or perhaps Chrom would be so gentle, his touches reserved and merely strokes, light and petting. He shutters his eyes with a firm order to his own mind to be silent and pretends to sleep, all while his heart pounds in his throat and his heart shatters.


End file.
